Sour Times
by EvilBad
Summary: Just as Sadie Hawke is preparing to leave Anders for Fenris, the Chantry explodes and all hell breaks loose.
1. Cowboys

_This story takes place approximately one month after the end of my fic "There is a Light That Never Goes Out".  
_

_It was written for a k!meme prompt that involved writing one installment for each track of an album. I selected Portishead S/T._

_Which means there will be eleven installments, although some of them will be lengthy. _

_After that, I plan to do one last fic in the series that will be a little more fluffy/romance oriented _

_A few warnings for this one: this fic concerns "The Last Straw". Consequently it's pretty dark. Also: __Anders. Bad things will happen to Anders in this story. If that's upsetting for you, you might want to skip this one._

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**Track 1 - Cowboys **

**(delete the spaces to visit the links)**

lyrics: www. azlyrics lyrics/ portishead/ cowboys. html

song: youtu .be /X746KJxCoDM

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_Is this the way? Is this the only way?_

**How long can mages live on the knife-edge, waiting for annihilation? You know as I do that it's only a matter of time.**

_It's a wonder they haven't killed us all already. Not that they haven't tried._

**You and I have helped many escape their wrath. But it is time for mages to stop running. To turn around and face their oppressors, and teach them fear.**

_I would rather strike the Gallows instead, and kill Meredith myself._

**You fear the loss of innocent life. But no one who enters the Chantry willingly is innocent. They all have blood on their hands.**

_Yes, blood on their hands. They're all guilty. They allow the templars to destroy us, and they do nothing to stop it._

**The Maker is gone, and their authority is illegitimate. If they are truly the voice of the Maker, He would surely prevent its destruction.**

_The Circles everywhere will see that we can resist. That their power is only an illusion and a lie._

**The mages of the Gallows must rise up to fight once the Chantry is destroyed. They will have no choice.**

_And Hawke will lead them. My Hawke. My love._

**She will kill Meredith for us. Justice will be done.**

_She will be angry. She still believes in peace._

**Hawke may have our life as payment. Justice will be done.**

_**We will be proud to die for our cause.**_

_**Let nothing stop us. Today is the day.**_


	2. All Mine

**Track 2 - All Mine**

**(delete the spaces to visit the links)**

**lyrics: www. azlyrics lyrics/ portishead/ allmine. html**

**song: youtu. be/ GUb4BsgfFFY**

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Fenris halts in the doorway to the clinic, his hand hovering just above the pommel of his sword.

The healer appears to be in some kind of trance. Standing alone in the middle of the room, he sways slightly back and forth. His lips move silently. And his wide-open eyes stare at nothing, tinged with blue fire.

"Mage!" he barks sharply at him several times, but there is no response.

The white-haired elf steps cautiously into the room, eyes locked onto Anders. He has never seen this before, and is not sure how alarmed he should be. Is this a usual thing, for a man possessed by a demon?

His... affliction had changed over the years. Once he had been more controlled, or at least more convincing in pretending it was so. More recently the mage had become more and more inward, seemingly preferring the company of his spirit passenger over that of his living companions, including his own lover.

For this reason Fenris has come to this wretched place, one he would normally avoid at all costs. But he has come to confront the man, not his monster. Perhaps he should come back another time.

Just as he decides to leave, the watchful elf senses a change in the air that signals the return of the mage's attention and falls into a ready stance, prepared to defend himself.

The human blinks several times, and sways on his feet. One pale and unsteady hand rises to rub at his tired eyes.

"Hawke, I already told you…" Anders starts to say, before catching sight of the intruder in his clinic. When he recognizes Fenris, he blanches in confusion. "You? What in blazes are you here for at this hour?"

"I could ask you the same, mage."

It is a rare thing, in fact. Both for Fenris to come to the Healer's clinic voluntarily, and for the mage and the warrior to speak directly. By Hawke's careful arrangements the two are rarely left alone together and certainly never has one sought out the other alone.

Fenris's hand has not left his sword.

The healer turns away from him, walking to his desk, and assumes a casually dismissive attitude, one that never fails to set the elf's teeth on edge. "I have work to do."

"Ah, yes. Healing the sick." Fenris assumes his usual measured and contemptuous tone. "Strange that I do not notice any sick people here at the moment."

Anders is in no mood to spar with Fenris at this particular hour. "Did you really come to Darktown in the middle of the night to see whether I was working?"

"I came to see where you are in the middle of the night that is not the Hawke estate."

"Where I am is none of your business." Anders thinks back over this last statement. "And how would you know when I am not in Hawke's house? Are you watching it? I knew you were creepy, but..."

Fenris's glare grows more and more malignant. "I do not need to watch Hawke's house. I can see Hawke. Hawke at the Hanged Man, Hawke at the barracks, Hawke at the Blooming Rose, Hawke everywhere but at her own house, presumably because you are not there either."

Anders looked truly perplexed now. "Are you trying to tell me I should go home early?"

Fenris drops his eyes to the floor, and reluctantly moves his hand away from his sword. "I am... asking you to let her go."

"Did you get knocked on the head recently? What are you talking about?"

"You know what I speak of. It is time for you to end this."

Anders laughs. "End things with Hawke? Are you serious?"

He is serious. And sincere in a way that Anders has never seen before. "Hawke is a good woman. She will never leave you. However miserable you make her, she will not abandon you."

"As I will not abandon her," Anders said. "And if you think I would leave her to the likes of you, you are sadly mistaken."

"And yet here you are, away from her. As always. You keep her at distance, but you won't release her. Do you care for her at all? Let her go."

"Or what?"

"I will take her from you."

Until now Fenris would not have considered such a declaration. Even if he had understood sooner what he felt for Hawke and what it meant, he would not have dared to act on his feelings. There is no question in his mind that Hawke deserves better.

But then she nearly died, and it shook him deeply. To watch her returning to resigned unhappiness after that has emboldened him to action. Who knows how much time they will have in this world? Hawke should not spend a moment more of it in misery. Though he is hardly the best one for the job, he now knows that he has at least some things to offer her. He did stay at her side when she needed it most, and he had held her after her ordeal and comforted her as she cried like a child.

He could do more than that if she let him. He would give her everything, if she would only let him.

Anders is hardly moved by this sincerity. Instead he laughs, as though it were a poor joke. "She is not an object to be taken!" he retorts. "Hawke is a person!"

"She is an unhappy person."

"And you really think you can make her happy?"

The glare returns now, looking up at him through narrowed eyes. "I, at least, will **try**."

"Try then. Go ahead! Really!" Anders grins nastily. "I'll let Hawke turn you down herself. But you're crazy if you think I'll make it easier for you."

"What about making it easier for Hawke?" Fenris stalks the room now, crossing in front of Anders' desk on silent bare feet. "What will be less painful for her, in the long run?"

"Oh come off it. Hawke is fine. If she were so miserable, she would tell me. And if you think she's suffering over **you**, you poor silly fool, let me set you straight. Hawke pities you. She is too kind for her own good. But she would never lie with a dog like you."

Fenris smirks, unable to resist a jab of his own. "We will do much more than lie, mage. Or did you think we only slept when you found us together in the clinic?"

The mage's eyes darken at this.

That morning. He had left Hawke convalescing in a clinic bed. There had been an argument. An argument which, not coincidentally, involved Fenris. And when he stalked out of the clinic in a rage, he returned at sunrise to find her moved into Fenris's bed with his arms around her, looking for all the world like lovers.

Anders doesn't know, of course, that nothing more had happened than a great deal of talking and a single kiss, cut short by Hawke herself. Fenris does not mean, exactly, to mislead him. To him, that single kiss is enough. It means everything, proves everything. It means she desires him, that she could be his if only Anders were out of the picture.

Anders has told himself, repeatedly, that he believes what Hawke told him: that she went to check on the injured Fenris, and was so weakened from her own injuries that she was unable to return to her room. The compulsively honest Sadie would not lie about such things. But he nurses suspicions. Not so much on what happened as on what nearly happened.

Anger, now, overpowers the detached contempt he typically holds for this wretched elf. A crackle of energy sizzles from his fingertips, concealed in his lap below the desk.

Anders raises his voice. "Did you really think I would just give her up? Because you asked?"

"No." He smiles without any pleasure at all. "I expect nothing. I expect you will continue as you are, and I will openly pursue her, and she will decide for herself. But I will not hide my intentions from you and I will not force her to keep secrets."

"You will stay away from Hawke, is what you'll do!" Anders slams the palm of his hand against his desk. "I should give you a punch in the jaw for harassing my lover, you pathetic son of a bitch."

"You are welcome to try."

Abruptly, Justice decides to intervene.

Yet again Anders is being distracted from their goal - and at the most crucial point. With more force than ever, Justice pushes the mortal man aside to assume control, ignoring his yelp of protest. Their eyes fill with the blue flame of the fade spirit, and Justice stands him up behind his desk.

Somehow Anders is taller when Justice is in command, and he looms over the elf.

Never before has Justice addressed Fenris directly. Anders had always forbidden it in order to keep the peace. (Of course, peace is no longer a priority. Not anymore.)

"**That is enough. You are a distraction. None of this matters now. Begone.**"

The elf flinches at this, too slight and too fast for notice. Visibly his posture alters; he draws himself straighter, and clenches his jaw.

"Have we been introduced, spirit?" he growls at the thing in Anders. "I am unfamiliar. Justice has never had much to do with my kind."

"**I would have nothing to do with anyone who would deny mages freedom,**" Justice informs him. "**It has nothing to do with your race.**

"Freedom?" The elf's voice grows stronger, powered by his outrage. "Freedom to abuse their power and murder their neighbors, yes, I would deny them that."

Justice had not meant to argue trifles with the lyrium elf, but he cannot resist the opportunity to prove the obnoxious mortal wrong. "**You speak of all mages as murderers. You are ignorant and prejudiced against mages.**"

"When demons stalk every mage, eagerly awaiting a moment of weakness, they all have potential to become killers. Every one of them. That is not prejudice, that is fact. For this they must be kept separate from the rest of us."

"**You cannot punish mages for crimes they have not committed.**"

Fenris gestures angrily at this. "Certainly, let us wait for people to be slaughtered. A few people here, a dozen there. What are a few lives compared to a mage's right to freedom?"

"**It is not just to hold all mages prisoner for the crimes of a few!**"

"Tell that to the next person to die at the hands of an abomination. Tell that to their mothers and their children. What _justice_is there for them? Oh, we're sorry your father died for no reason, but the mages have to be free!" He stepped closer, his features twisted into a hateful scowl. "You are a fraud, spirit. Justice offered only to your own kind isn't justice at all."

"**Enough. You are an irritating little elf, and we have endured your presence long enough. After today we need never hear your hateful nonsense again."**

"After today?" Fenris gives him a canny look. He has already begun to back away slowly.

Justice tilts his head quizzically. "**You wish to what?**" he says to no one.

The elf's unease swiftly turns to fear. He bolts.

And Justice turns on him now. With a simple wave of his hand, he commands the lyrium in Fenris's body.

Every muscle suddenly cramps, stiffening, the great muscles of his legs clenching like a vise. He collapsing to the floor in agony.

"No no no no..." he moans, leaning against his shuddering arms. Not this. Not again.

"_**Oh, I see...**_ the mage stares in wonder at the man dropped to his knees before him. "_**It's so *easy*...**_"

With a flick of his wrist, the elf warrior is tossed aside, flipped over onto his back and scrambling in a panic to resist the magic's hold.

"_**The lyrium commands you like a puppet on a string. Much like a Templar, actually.**_" He flattens his hand sharply, and the elf's body performs a similar move, smashing him to the floor. "_**There is a trick to it, of course. Only your Master would know your brands replenish themselves through the Fade. Your Master, or a Fade spirit..."**_

Fenris, pinned to the floor, hyperventilates in pain and terror.

It is difficult to say now who is in charge; the man or the fade spirit. They approach him together.

"_**I've always wondered, Fenris. What have I ever done to you, for you to hate me so? I could have crushed you at any time**_", he seethed, approaching his convulsing body, "_**and I've done nothing. But with others! With Bethany! Her you are polite to, even kindly!"**_

"She... is not... a monster." Fenris forces the words out through a blaze of pain.

"_**A monster, me? This from someone more lyrium than elf, someone who tears the beating heart out of his enemies while they plead for mercy! And **__**I'm**__** the monster?"**_ Anders paces above him, outraged. _**"I have been REMARKABLY restrained considering the grief you've given me over the years - over something SOMEONE ELSE did to you! Now I'm only returning the pain you and those like you have caused me my entire life!**_"

Through gritted teeth he hisses defiantly: "Should I... call you Master now? Is that... what you want?"

Justice - no, Anders - no: Vengance falls upon him now, sitting atop the prone fighter and extending a blue haze around him.

"_**I SHOULD TEAR YOU LIMB FROM LIMB!**_" they scream in his face, blazing. "_**You don't deserve to live!**_"

Eyes squeezed shut, Fenris fights fiercely through the magic for some weakness, something which would allow him to escape. At first there is nothing, but then, there: his right arm is free.

With a movement faster than the naked eye could see, he grabs Anders by the throat. Tightly, he clenches his neck until the man's eyes bulge from their sockets and shakes him until he can feel the magic release his body.

Then he throws the mage across the room.

Anders slams into the wall with a force that shakes the entire ramshackle clinic, knocking entire shelves of boxes and bottles to the ground. He collapses into a twitching heap on the floor.

Instantly Fenris is on his feet with his sword drawn, shaky but mostly recovered. He watches closely as the mage lifts his head, grimaces, and looks around in confusion.

"That was unexpected," Anders says quietly. He shakes his head, subtly, and pulls himself together. With quiet dignity he rises up from the floor, not quite looking at the threatening warrior across the room from him.

"You disappoint me, Fenris," Anders admits with a strangely rueful smile as he straightens his black coat. "That should have been your cue to tear my heart out."

Carefully keeping his sword between them, Fenris stares in confusion.

There was a time, once, when he wouldhave gutted him without a second thought, rather than merely cast him away in defense. Right now, though, the elf backs away from him, and tells himself that this is not the same man he had traveled with in the past, the man Hawke loves. Something has gone terribly, dreadfully wrong.

He doesn't know what to do. "I don't understand," he manages to say.

"No matter." Anders turns his back on the elf, and starts to gather the broken items from the floor. "I'm finished with you. Do what you like."

Anders pauses and looks up, directly at him. "But know this: no matter what happens to me. She will never love you."

Fenris has no response for this.

With a last, heated look, he watches the abomination who is now only a man gathering his belongings. He is ignoring him now, looking peaceful and unbothered.

Still holding his sword at the ready, Fenris leaves the clinic and vanishes into the night.


	3. Undenied

Hawke turns over and over in her bed, frowning.

Normally she sleeps like a stone, passed out in whichever position her body hit the bed. She may stay up all hours first, but once she looks for sleep it usually does not elude her.

Tonight it does. She turns this way and that, kicks the blankets off, and pulls them over her again. She looks again and again to her doorway, at every creak of the floorboards, searching for Anders' slim form and tired face.

For a while, things had been different. When she came home from the clinic, still battered from her ordeal in the Bone Pit, Anders had attended to her tenderly. He had waited on her, while walking was still painful, and he had helped her dress and bathe with her injured arm. But more than that, he had been _himself _again. He smiled and laughed. He was affectionate with her, and no shadows hid in those big brown eyes to haunt them. For a time it was the way it used to be between them: easy, peaceful, and happy.

And she had hoped.

But it did not last. Now he does not smile, and he does not pull her into the chair with him when he sits in her library and wrap his thin strong arms around her and hold her close. No, he stares into the fire and does not hear her talking to him. He bids her good night vaguely when she goes to bed and falls asleep at a desk with a pen in his hand. He is drowning again beneath the weight of his burden - the manifesto, the plight of the mages, and the fate of all Thedas. His shoulders are slumped with it. And no matter how she tries, she cannot help him.

She loves Anders no less than on the day they first pledged themselves to one another. She would tear her own heart from her breast for him, if it would help. It has taken a long time for her to realize that it won't. That is the most heartbreaking thing of all.

There is another face she looks for at her door. She doesn't want to, but the thought of it returns to her again and again. She knows one day he will come, and she knows she will welcome him when he does. Though she does not understand yet what she feels for Fenris, she knows this for a fact.

Her relationship with Anders is ending; there is another fact.

It seems that whatever she does, the outcome is inevitable. Anders is moving away from her in slow motion, taking with him the only love she has ever known. She has tried in every way to prevent it: she has been understanding and demanding in turn, tried to be distant in order not to pressure him, tried to be demonstrative to make him feel appreciated. Everything she can think of, she has tried.

She has never been good at this. Her siblings were always the ones with the torrid romances. She was the one standing guard for their literal rolls in the hay with the local heartthrobs. Sadie has always been the protector of the family. First with fists, then with swords. Since she was big enough to stand she has been a fighter.

It has taken its toll. Scarred and weathered, she looks every inch the peasant roughneck. Undelicate. Broad-shouldered and thick-thighed. She has never quite been able to pass as a noblewoman in Kirkwall. In the finest dresses her mother could find, she feels like a court jester. The transition to Champion was a relief in comparison, easier to understand.

It was always a surprise, then, to have captured the attention of the handsome Lowtown healer, who pursued her with a zeal more suited to a queen than a mercenary. He had been sweet, romantic, like the storybooks her sister had loved as a child. He had been the one to bridge the gap between them. Now, with the gap reopening into a chasm, she does not know how to reach him.

All she can do is fight. It's what she does best.

After all, it's the Mage Underground, and its dissolution, that has pushed him to the edge. The rest all dead or fled the city, he has taken the whole mission onto his own shoulders. If she can relieve that burden, she could get her Anders back.

If she can just broker a peace between Meredith and Orsino, just long enough to get a Viscount into place who isn't obsessively paranoid about mages. The underground can come back, rebuild, push for independence. Meanwhile she can keep on stamping down on the extremists, templars and blood mages alike, when they get out of hand - she can do this forever. As long as it takes.

For Anders. For her friends. For all the people she's met and loved. She's going to hold this city together with clapboards and paste and_ her own bloody fingernails._ Whatever it takes.

Sadie climbs out of bed, and paces the room restlessly.

How often she wished the clock could be turned back, and she could try everything again. Not to return to the past, but to repair it, make it the way it should have been. Have all of her family here, in the Amell Estate, first of all. Including the people who had never lived to set foot in it. Have her lover here by her side, the way he was when she first met him. Bring back the peace and prosperity that had governed Kirkwall in some probably-nonexistant old era.

Impossible, all of it. Now everything is upside-down and backwards, most of all herself.

Ever since she came home everything has felt wrong. Even when things seemed the most right between her and Anders these last weeks, it felt wrong. She tells herself she still loves him. And she does, but... at the same time the sight of him makes her clench inside with anxiety, wondering what mood he will be in. If they would argue. If he would have some new horror for her to try to fix for him. Or worse, if his control would break again, and this time she will not be able to stop him from hurting some poor soul.

It has been true for much longer than she wants to admit. She wants to blame this on Fenris, but it has been this way for a long time.

Dammit. There he is again. Fenris.

Hawke sinks into an armchair and glares at the cold embers of the fire.

This is where her thoughts fall apart into confusion. She has only recently learned that the elf warrior cares for her, and more deeply than she would have thought possible. She knew he was loyal and a good friend to her. He had put up with more than a few situations that she knew he disapproved of strongly. However much he complained to her about it, he would take up arms with the rest of them when she chose to defend apostates. But she had always explained it away. Fenris seemed to need a leader to fall behind, at least until he was fully accustomed to commanding his own destiny. It was only her good fortune that she had stumbled into his path and joined their causes, so that she could earn his trust and his sword. He respected her as a fighter and leader. It had never, never occurred to her that his devotion could be anything more than that.

After what happened, though...

It isn't so much the stories she has heard from her companions, the ones about how he had reacted to the news of her "death" and what he had put himself through to save her. What convinces her is that vague memory of being cradled in his arms, half-alive, and the way he had bourne her broken body back to Kirkwall with the kind of tenderness she has never seen in him before. When she remembers that, she can't deny that he has feelings for her.

Her own feelings, well. That was harder to figure out. She might have been overwhelmed by his belief in her, touched by his devotion, or simply suffering temporary insanity, but for whatever reason, when they were reunited that night in the clinic, she had kissed him. And it felt good. It felt really, really good.

This must be why people said never to fool around with a friend; nothing was ever the same afterwards. Some things, once thought, cannot be un-thought. She could not banish the idea of that kiss, nor of the way they had lain in each other's arms. Chaste as it was, the memory of it is powerfully intimate, even intoxicating. She couldn't even look at him now without blushing furiously, and had to avoid being alone with him at any cost.

The feeling of it comes back to her with startling regularity. No matter how edged with guilt for her unfaithfulness, the emotions summoned by the thought of him are comforting ones. Happy ones, even.

Which makes her even more guilty.

She has avoided him, hoping that time would diminish these strange feelings. It has only made things worse. Now, on top of everything, she _misses _the prickly bastard. She misses their talks and she misses his slouchy stance and his wry humor, and misses the unstoppably glorious sensation of fighting side-by-side with him, two warriors in perfect sync.

Worst of all, she has let such thoughts into her rare moments with Anders. The last time they had made love...

_I am the worst person in the world_, she tells herself again.

For so long she has been holding back her hopes from Anders, so it wouldn't hurt so damned much for them to be dashed. She made herself not care when he was distant from her and didn't come to her bed. When he returned, weeks ago, when he was really there and really trying to be the man he used to be, she simply could not call the feelings back. It was dreadful. She found herself exaggerating her happiness, hoping that the old bond between them would come back. To no avail.

When they went to bed together, she couldn't help it. She had thought not of soft brown eyes, but harsh green ones, and the guilt of it made her have to look away. She closed her eyes and she could not stop it. The hands on her that felt so familiar and yet so impersonal became _Fenris's _hands, and she burned with it. She encouraged her lover to take her from behind so he could not see her face, and she had already betrayed him in so many ways in her mind that there was no point in stopping here, not when she was so responsive to every touch that he even commented on her excitement. She wished for Fenris, for his touch, for his low voice in her ear telling her what she meant to him. For the first time in ages she found ecstasy with the man she loved, but with another man's name on her lips.

Thinking it in her mind is not _actually _cheating, but to Hawke it seems just as bad.

Especially since she has thought of it so much, and so often, and in so _many _ways.

Perhaps it is only lust, created by her loneliness and her dissatisfaction. In her years with Anders she has never considered another lover until now. Perhaps this is simply what everyone goes through when they've been together so long? They are only idle thoughts. She will never cheat on Anders, and she will not abandon him when he needs her support. This will go nowhere. If Fenris comes, when he comes, she will tell him... oh Maker, what will she tell him? Lie? Tell him her relationship isn't falling apart? That she doesn't think of him, dream of him?

Oh, she is such a cliche. Like one of Isabela's torrid romances, with a badly-drawn cover of a noble lady with a dashing knight at one arm and a rugged pirate at the other. Torn between two men. She told Isabela laughingly that she should be so lucky as to consider her greatest problem having not one but two handsome men competing for her attentions.

Isabela laughed at her for that. Curse her, she has probably known all along.

Now she _is_ the noblewoman caught between two men, and it is an awful feeling.

Hawke leaves her bed and slips down the stairs quietly, giving up on sleep for now. She does not start the fire or light the candles. She sits at her desk with only a few wisps of moonlight highlighting the room.

The quiet is only out of habit, now. There is no one here to wake. Bodhan and Sandal have left for Orlais, where Sandal will be recognized for his talent and surely make them wealthy in their own right. She sent Orana with them. She will need to live on her own someday, without a mistress to serve, and Bodhan had already taken a fatherly interest in her well-being. The girlish elf had cried at their separation, and at leaving the first kind home she had ever known, but it had been for the best. It wasn't safe for any of them here, not anymore.

Sadie studies the silent room, absently rolling her quill between her fingers.

It is her greatest secret that she could give Fenris quite the run for his money on the title of World Champion Brooder. Given a quiet moment she can fall into long bouts of moody contemplation. Not even Varric really knows this about her. She only does this when she's alone, when no one can see. Unfortunately, she is alone often, these days.

This place is filled with ghosts. The Amells that had died here before she could meet them. Her dead brother Carver, who had never even set foot in this place but had somehow followed her there, whose ringing voice she still sometimes heard in a noisy room. Her sister, locked in the Gallows. Her presence haunted this place too. Their mother had arranged all the things Bethany left behind around the home so that it would seem she was only away on a trip and not gone for good, and Sadie had never brought herself to change it. Then there was Fang, her poor old mabari, who died peacefully a year ago, right there in his customary spot by the fire. She still expected to see him bound into view whenever she came home, and there was always a pang of grief when he did not appear.

And her mother. Always her mother. She still could swear she sees her pacing restlessly around the house from time to time, fussing over little imperfections, worrying over her children, missing her father.

Sadie never even wanted this stupid house. It was all for her mother that she rebuilt the family home. Her mother was the one who furnished and decorated and managed the place; Hawke's own stewardship of the manor is half-hearted in comparison.

Now she is all alone in this giant old manor that is still and silent as a tomb. More of a museum of past lives than a home, now.

She sits back in her chair and listens to the quiet, so different from the rambunctious household she had been raised in and the busy household she had created.

If she is honest, really honest with herself, she wants badly to leave this place. The stillness of it fills her with sorrow. But she is responsible for it, as she is responsible for so many things. And she has never quite been able to abandon her responsibilities.

Fenris (there he is again) has come to her home only rarely. He hovers on the periphery as if afraid of spoiling it, and he speaks in a quiet tone that somehow still fills the enormous space. He studiously avoids looking at the horrible Tevinter sculpture that she cannot bring herself to throw out because her mother picked it out, and which she always apologizes for. He looks every bit as out of place here as she often feels pretending to be a typical noble hostess.

Still she likes to think of him here. She imagines him arriving right now, seeing her there at her desk. He would hesitate at the door, unsure of himself, and then close it behind him. He would cross the room without making a sound and he would busy himself building a fire in the fireplace for her. And he wouldn't have to say anything at all to make the manor live again. He would bring the future with him, not the past.

If not for Anders… she would have no hesitation.

She knows it, and yet it makes her course no clearer. Unfortunately, there may be many more sleepless nights before she can make that call.

When a real, rattling knock sounds from her door, Hawke jumps up with surprise. She rushes for the door and yanks it open. She doesn't decide who to hope for on the other side.

It isn't Fenris; nor is it Anders. It is a messenger, bearing an urgent letter just as dawn is arriving over his shoulder. Hawke reads it, sighs, and runs to her room to get dressed.

* * *

Champion,

You have proven yourself a friend to Kirkwall's mages and it seems I must call upon you once again. Meredith has gone too far, and I will not let her madness remain unchecked. I ask that you come to the Gallows at once. Perhaps together we can stop this before there is bloodshed.

First Enchanter Orsino


	4. Half Day Closing

_Author's note: thank you for your reviews. they are great motivation to get through this difficult story._

* * *

Adrenaline still pounds through Fenris as he makes his way to Hightown, to Hawke.

He takes a long route, and thinks of what to say.

They have not spoken together since it happened. Since she was hurt so badly and he had been filled with mortal fear for her.

For so long he has been too preoccupied with his own survival to have anything to spare for anyone else, not until her. It is... exhausting, really. To care so much for another. He can't remember ever caring about anyone, not lovers or friends or even family, though he must have once. He had a mother and he must have loved her and his (wretched, traitorous) sister to have fought for their freedom. But that life is gone now and this terrorizing concern is a new thing.

There had been a moment, a beautiful moment, when he thought he could do this. In the clinic after her accident, Hawke had needed someone and for once it didn't matter that he is broken and unworthy. He had somehow known exactly what to do - it was a kind of miracle. And equally miraculously, it seemed as though she could feel something for him too. The memory of it is a pure, frozen moment that he treasures like a precious jewel.

But afterwards she went home with Anders and he had not known what to do. He waited and he watched and she seemed to be happy but he knew better. But how to proceed? If he went to her now she would reject him. She would not be unfaithful to Anders and she does not seem ready to leave him.

And, in fact, how could he ask her to? What has he to offer her? Anders has little more material wealth or standing than Fenris, but he is human and that is its own advantage. And he is her lover and living companion, something Fenris has no experience in. He has felt a slow unclenching of his anxieties, particularly since Danarius's death, and his aversion to touch has lessened somewhat. But he has seen how easy the two of them are with each other, freely affectionate and demonstrative, and he does not know if he is capable of it.

So he has waited, and Hawke has grown sorrowful again and it outrages him. He cannot stand to see her unhappy. Whatever the result, he wants to tell her everything. That she is the most incredible person he has ever known, that he owes her everything, that he would do anything for her.

Approaching Anders was foolish, of course. It was a desperate move. He knew it would not go well with the mage, but he had not anticipated... this.

He trudges up the steps to Hightown and ponders this new development, and what to tell Hawke now.

_Your lover tried to kill me._

_Your lover is insane._

_Your lover is more insane than he previously was, and also he tried to kill me._

_If that doesn't sufficiently disturb you, I fear he may do worse before the day is out._

_No, I'm not just saying this because I hate him and I adore you and I want you to leave him._

_(But I do hate him.)_

_(And I do... that.)_

_(Kevesh... this will not work.)_

She will think he exaggerates. She will blame it on his dislike of mages and of Anders in particular. She will think he picked a fight by going there in the first place. She will not believe him, and it will spoil everything.

He should have tried to recruit somebody sensible like Aveline or Varric to reason with her. Aveline is as wary of the mage as he is, and Varric worries over Hawke's safety much more than he lets on. They must have noticed how unstable the healer has become.

Perhaps it should wait; it is morning, it is too early. But he sees her manor before him in the distance and he knows he cannot delay. After what happened a few hours ago, it is urgent that he warn Hawke that something is dreadfully wrong with Anders. Before something terrible can happen.

But it seems he is too late already. He knocks and knocks at her door, and no one answers.

She is not like him; if she were at home she would answer the door. And at this time of the morning she should be at home.

_There is no reason to be alarmed_, he tells himself. _She has probably gone to market._

_The market is not yet open._

_Somewhere else, then. Where?_

He scowls at her closed door and crosses his arms, cursing himself for stalling so long. Should he wait here for her, or return later? In the end he decides to seek out Varric in Lowtown. He may know where to find Hawke, and he should hear his concerns about the abomination as well.

This is how he finds them, Hawke and her other companions. As he comes down from Hightown, the whole mob of them is approaching from Lowtown. They seem to be on the way to the Chantry - Orsino charging ahead, Meredith attempting to hold him back, scattered mages and templars following along uneasily. Aveline, Varric, and Isabela stand outside the group, watching.

And Hawke, as usual, in the middle of it all.

Fenris doesn't have to hear her words to know what she is saying. _We must find a way to work together. It doesn't have to end in bloodshed._It is what she always says, now, whenever she can.

When she was younger, the Hawke of years ago was always itching for a fight, eager to prove herself and to mete out justice with her own hands. With time, he has seen her grow tired of death. Now she tries a different path, one of reason and understanding. Perhaps she has lost too much to take death so lightly. Or she has too much sympathy for too many people on both sides to allow them to crush each other.

Hawke still believes in peace. It is admirable, if utterly in vain.

The faction leaders are still shouting at each other as Fenris approaches quietly. Meredith is demanding a search of the Mage's Quarters, claiming they conspire in secret. Orsino has chosen this moment to put his foot down.

"Is there any truth to what she's saying?" Hawke asks the First Enchanter.

"These are only her latest accusations, nothing more," Orsino dismisses. "And what if she does not find what she's looking for? How much further will she go to root out something that _isn't there_?"

Meredith turns to her, pleading. "The Champion knows better than anyone how deep the corruption goes. I must find the source!"

Fenris watches Hawke carefully. There has certainly been blood mage activity in the Circle, although Meredith has no way of knowing that she has already discovered and stamped it out at Orsino's bequest.

Clearly, the Champion decides it would not do to reveal this at such a fraught moment.

"There must be some way we can work this out. Orsino, if there is nothing to find, then why not let her search?"

"And let the templars plant the evidence she wants so badly to find? You have seen what they do, Hawke. You know we cannot trust the templars to be honest."

"You can trust me." Hawke notices the eyes of everyone on her, and draws herself straight and proud. "I only want to get this city back in order, to have peace for mages and templars and everyone else living here. Let me search the tower. If any malificarum are hiding in the Circle, I will deal with them. If not, Meredith calls off her search and lets the Circle live in peace."

Meredith stares at her skeptically.

Fenris slips around the group to stand beside Varric on the steps. "How long has this been going on?" he murmurs to the dwarf.

"Any amount is too long. It's too early for this shit," Varric says under his breath. He looks like he has been pulled straight from his bed and is none too happy about it.

"I respect your judgment, Knight-Commander," Hawke tells Meredith honestly. "We all want the same thing - an end to this madness. There has to be a solution we can all live with. If we just work together—"

The Knight-Commander shakes her head forlornly. "I wish I could believe you, Champion. You might aid and abet renegade apostates, but I have seen you be reasonable. You have stopped a number of dangerous maleficarum and protected the people of Kirkwall — yes, I have seen it. But you are not neutral, and can never be neutral, because your sister is a mage."

Bethany, standing with the mages of the Circle, startles a little, with everyone suddenly looking at her.

The Templar leader continues with what seems to Fenris great sincerity. "I understand it, Maker knows I understand it. She is your sister and you will protect her in any way you can. You cannot possibly be objective in this. To you she will always be an innocent no matter what occurs."

Suddenly fierce, Sadie speaks over her. "My sister may be a mage, but I have suffered my own losses. My mother was murdered by a blood mage! I know **very well **the dangers you want to prevent. Trust me when I say that I more than anyone want this city to be safe. But all of this mistrust, all of this needless bloodshed, it will only bring more violence! It will never end unless we decide it together - no more killing. No more tranquility. No more blood magic."

She looks between the First Enchanter and the Knight Commander. "We can stop this. It needs to stop. There must be a compromise that we can reach together - an imperfect one, but one that will allow us to talk peacefully. If you are willing, you two can make that happen."

Fenris watches Hawke arguing passionately for peace, and finds himself moved. One can almost believe compromise was desirable, even wise, listening to Hawke.

_But it isn't possible,_ Fenris thinks. _The faction leaders are petty, they squabble like siblings or old lovers and they would cast the rest of Kirkwall into the Void to save their own hides. They are not like Hawke._

Hawke would shield the powerless and voiceless with her own body and sacrifice her heart and soul to protect the city and everyone in it. It should be Hawke in the Viscount's seat; he has thought this for a long time. Meredith is not worthy, her leadership had failed the city. He was inclined to take her side of this conflict, but if she hadn't the wit to listen to Hawke then she is as useless as the First Enchanter.

It has always been fascinating to him, the way Hawke can make strangers stop and listen and fall to her command, even back when she was a penniless Fereldan refugee. If Hawke were the Viscount, she could bring peace to the city. She could make all sides stop and listen despite their disagreements. He would (and frequently does) argue with her about her sympathy for mages, but can admit that he would march into the Void for her, if she only asked. And he was far from the only one who felt this way.

But Orsino is unmoved by her speech. "There will be no more searches! I will be happy to discuss a compromise, but only if our privacy is no longer invaded."

"You have to give me something, Orsino!" Meredith demands. "A gesture of good faith, to show you are trustworthy!"

"I can have no good faith with you. The Grand Cleric will resolve it fairly, she is the only one I trust."

"You will not bring Her Grace into this!" Meredith snaps at him, and prepares to make good on her threat.

_**"The Grand Cleric cannot help you now."**_

It is Anders, and Fenris is immediately struck with the knowledge that he has done something terrible.

Whatever Anders has become, he is no longer ashamed of it. He stamps his staff into the cobblestones like a judge banging a gavel, and it is clear the judgment has already been made.

_**"I will not stand by and watch you treat all mages like criminals while those who would lead us bow to their Templar jailers," **_he announces. It sounds like a rehearsed speech, but the passion he brings to it is very real.

Orsino bristles at the impetuous young mage. "How dare you —"

_**"The Circle has failed us, Orsino. Even you should be able to see that. The time has come to act. There can be no half-measures."**_

As he has increasingly come to do, Fenris looks to Hawke for her reaction. She is frozen in place, and she stares at her lover with an unsettling mixture of love and fear.

"Anders, what have you done?" she asks in a low, horror-struck voice.

But she knows. She is a few seconds ahead of them, as always. Her face turns to the Chantry.

_**"There can be no turning back,"**_the abomination says, even as the first rumblings are beginning and the earth churns beneath their feet. If there is any regret in his voice, it is much too late for it.

The Chantry explodes in a pillar of blood-red light, with a deafening roar that brings the entire population of Kirkwall scrambling outside to see. The spire of the holy building is obliterated instantaneously, while its remaining bulk crumbles and lifts into the air like a solid stormcloud. For an eerie moment it is almost beautiful, the majestic burst of power that levels the largest building in Kirkwall.

Then the debris begins to rain down in chunks of ash and fire and the ringing sound in Fenris's ears subsides enough to begin to hear the screams.

All at once there are people everywhere, more people than you would even imagine could fit into the city, leaving their houses and stalls to look on the devastation and cry out in rage and grief and fear. Already here and there flames alight the city from new angles where the fire has spread and the inhabitants of each doomed building run crying into the square, clutching children and belongings.

Chaos. This will be chaos.

The elf's gaze whips around rapidly to take it all in. He is aware of the city guards approaching, a redheaded warrior prominent among them, and from another direction the blood witch arrives from the Alienage wringing her hands in distress.

From behind him Fenris hears a scream of outrage as the Prince of Starkhaven falls to his knees before his ruined home and weeps for the Grand Cleric. He knows from long evenings conversing with the prince that Elethina was like a mother to Sebastian, and his grief will be staggering. And, if experience is any guide, so will his rage.

But for now he focuses his outrage into a prayer for the dead and dying, his gentle brogue a small solace in the pandemonium of the square.

Fenris finds he has gone cold and still inside; it's what tends to happen to him in the face of catastrophe. He will muse over all of this later. Right now he prepares himself for what will happen next.

Orsino is shouting at the abomination now, his betrayal fresh and sharp. "Why? Why would you do such a thing?"

He seems deflated now, Anders. His great deed is done and fatalism has set in. He looks around himself as though he were just another spectator. "I removed the chance of compromise - because there IS no compromise," he says weakly.

All sides are converging on Hawke. Already Meredith is announcing her invocation of the Right of Annulment and orders all of the mages killed immediately. But Hawke shows no reaction. She has not once looked away from the ruin of the Chantry; she stares into the smoke and rubble in silent disbelief. Her helmet has dropped to the ground and she stands frozen, hair and armor golden in the sunlight, looking much like the statue of herself that now stands over the docks.

Orsino grasps at her still shoulder, imploring her to act. "The Circle didn't even do this! Champion, you can't let her! Help us stop this madness!"

"And I call on you to keep order!" The Knight-Commander demands. "After what just occurred, you cannot deny what must be done!"

Sebastian finally rises to his feet, and he too descends on Hawke. "Why are we debating the Right of Annulment when the monster who did this is right here? I swear to you, I will kill him!"

Anders watches Hawke too, at a distance. "It can't be stopped now. You have to choose."

Perhaps she hears them; perhaps not. She doesn't say a word.

"You fool. You've doomed us all!" Orsino snaps at Anders.

"We were already doomed. A quick death now or a slow one later - I'd rather die fighting."

"Champion," the Knight-Commander continues to address Hawke even though she gives no sign of hearing any of them. "Even if I wanted to, I cannot stay my hand. The people will demand blood."

Orsino seethes at them all, his hands in fists at his sides. "Whose blood?! Hawke, you said you would root out the threat for us - and it is not in the Circle! It is in _your own_command. This is your responsibility."

She finally turns her head at this, and looks at Orsino. Her face is curiously blank, but her blue eyes widen at his words.

"We await your decision, Champion." Meredith glares impatiently.

She looks so small right now. Hawke is a short woman, shorter even than Fenris, but usually you wouldn't know it from the way she carries herself. She has a wide open stance and a boisterous voice and a penchant for giant flashy war-axes and she takes up more space than any one person seems a right to, and she nearly never holds this still for long. It seems wrong to see her like this, slumped and shrinking.

She bows her head for a moment, her cloud of messy blonde hair hanging over her face.

Then at last, Hawke quietly speaks, looking up again at the smoldering ruins. "Will you spare the mages if the perpetrator is handed over?"

"The crime is not avenged until the Circle is annulled. He is but one of the mages of this city who would strike against the very system by which we keep the people safe. Until every mage is dead we will none of us be safe."

Hawke looks directly at her now, and her eyes have gone as hard as diamonds.

"Do what you must, then" she says flatly. "And I will do the same."

She says nothing more. She turns her back on the two of them and approaches Anders. Her face is a mask now, any turmoil concealed beneath it impossible to see.

She takes his hand.

"Gather our forces!" The Knight Commander shouts to her Templars. "We will deal with this. Converge on the gallows and await my order - any maleficar you encounter along the way, kill them immediately."

Bethany and the other Circle mages draw closer together, preparing to fight. "Stop them!" the First Enchanter instructs, backing away. "I will warn the others!"

Orsino takes off at a dead run in the direction of the Gallows. Several Templars pursue, and the Circle mages follow, releasing their magic in an effort to cover Orsino's escape.

Fenris, too, longs to draw his sword, but that would mean turning away from whatever is happening with Hawke and Anders, and he cannot stop looking. She is guiding him to a crate nearby, and he leans on her as if all strength has left him.

She sits him down, and her considerate treatment of the mage claws at the elf's cool reserve. His hands fist at his sides.

As the clamor of the fighting between Orsino's mages and the templars in pursuit of the First Enchanter draws slowly away and the crowds begin to rush in every direction, only Hawke's band of companions remains, circled around one of their own.

"Do _not_tell me you are going to let him go," Sebastian says. "He is a murderer! If I had been in the Chantry today would you still hesitate? You know what must be done."

"He should come with us," Merrill offers timidly. "Make up for what he's done."

Aveline is openly angry. "Belief is no excuse. Sincerity doesn't justify… this!"

And Fenris does his level best to sound completely detached from the situation. "He wants to die," he offers. "Kill him and be done with it."

A strange thing happens. Even as he says it, Fenris realizes the real truth of his words.

Last night. When Anders had attacked him, when he had overpowered him with the Magister's controls that were threaded into his skin and pinned him to the floor, he had suddenly, _miraculously_gotten his hand free.

It shouldn't have happened.

It would never have happened, in Tevinter. He had never been able to pull free, once overpowered by his own lyrium brands. There had been any number of times that Danarius had performed the same trick, and no matter how hard he tried never once had he broken that hold.

Perhaps he was stronger now. But his right hand? Wasn't that incredibly… convenient?

_You disappoint me, Fenris. That should have been your cue to tear my heart out._

The others are talking, and Fenris isn't listening anymore. _You wanted me to stop you a few hours ago. I should have killed you when I had the chance,_ he realizes. _Perhaps then none of this would have happened._

He steps forward, into the center of the circle where Hawke and Anders are. "Let me do it, if you will not," he says to her.

"No!" she says sharply. "Stay where you are!"

As though awakened at last from a long sleep, her features are finally alive. But they are heavy with sorrow. Steadfastly she holds her hand out against Fenris, to keep his sword at bay, and she knows he will not draw it now.

"Hawke," he starts to say.

"No." She denies him as she would a stranger. "Leave us."

She falls to her knees at the mage's side as Fenris steps back beside the others.

They talk, softly. Hawke draws close to him and whispers urgently, and the mage responds wearily. Her metal hands cling to his arm, as though to keep him from drifting away. There is no sign of Justice now, and what's left of Anders looks emptied out, hollow. He looks into Hawke's eyes with what seems an unblinking gaze. Both of them look tired and grey in the flickering light of the burning city.

What passes between them now, no one can say.

Perhaps five minutes go by as they talk, and the rest of them watch uneasily. They imagine that she will bring him along or send him away, and no other option seems likely.

Even when Hawke unsheathes the dagger at her belt, no one really believes she would to use it. Not until, in a quick fluid motion, she buries it in his back. An assassin's strike, a straight cut to the heart.

Anders stiffens without a sound - it is Sadie who cries out, a single sharp sob - and he falls over into her arms. She holds him there, cradled in her arms through every last shudder, until at last he is still.

She remains there, holding Anders, for a long time. Long enough that her companions look at one another nervously, shifting from one foot to the other. Fenris stares at her rigid back in disbelief, unable to see her face.

Nobody says a word.

Finally Hawke lowers Anders to the ground and kisses his still face.

As she stands, she lifts her helmet from the ground and places it upon her head, and draws her battleaxe from its customary place on her back. Slowly she brings it around to grasp in both hands, as if ready to strike.

Then, without a word, Hawke begins walking away.

Varric calls after her, as does Aveline, but Hawke does not slow or turn. She strides briskly down the stairs into Lowtown, in the direction of the docks, and does not look above her or to the right or left.

Her friends trail behind her uncertainly, exchanging looks of alarm.

When the first Templar approaches Hawke, commanding her to halt, she swings her axe from its ready position with a speed and smoothness she has never before achieved, and she strikes off his head. It pitches wetly to the ground and bounds down the steps and for an awful second the body stays standing above it, before it too falls stiffly down.

Without pausing even to clean her axe, and without breaking her stride, Hawke walks onward down the stairs, towards the docks, towards the Gallows, where her destiny awaits.


	5. Over

_Looking back, she will see the thread which, once pulled, unraveled everything._

_Of course, there are threads everywhere in the City of Chains; perhaps any one of them could have begun it all. Perhaps it was always inevitable and it did not matter what she did. The Witch of the Wilds said it to her once - is it fate, or is it chance?_

_Whether by fate or chance, in the end it is still her fault. This is the day she failed Kirkwall, and doomed so many people across the Free Marches, and perhaps over all of Thedas, to their deaths._

_This is the day she failed the men she loves. Both of them._

* * *

From the moment Hawke draws her axe, her awareness narrows down to a single sharp focus.

She is going to the Gallows, and she is going to slay anyone who gets in her way.

Everything else has gone perfectly blank. The sights and smells and sounds of the burning city have gone away. They are things that happened to someone else. Another Hawke. One that, a moment ago, ceased to exist.

This Hawke walks down the stairs to Lowtown in perfect silence.

Her axe swings once, one swift strike that winds back around her to ready another blow like a coiled snake across her shoulders. She is already stepping past before her opponent's head hits the ground and long before the rest of him does.

There are more coming. They are massing at the bottom of the stairs. They are her next goal. This is how she will get where she is going. One axe-blow at a time. From one body to the next.

People are following her, she is vaguely aware. She doesn't look to see who.

The sounds of battle crack through the silence that surrounds her, sharpening her senses to a fine and deadly point.

Her axe flies again, and templars are bled.

She leaps from the stairs and crashes directly into two of their armored forms, tumbling all of them to the ground where she hacks savagely at everything around her.

One by one they fall until she is the only one standing and she is walking again. Blood is dripping into her eyes and it might be her blood and it might not. With one arm she rests her axe across her shoulders and bounds through the market and she hears only her own breath huffing in and out of her helmet in great gusts.

There are abominations now. She slays them too.

Her rage is so overpowering that she cannot feel it. It is in her hands that swing her weapon and in the sounds that are coming out of her mouth with every blow.

There is nearly nothing but rage and she cannot feel it. The part of her that used to feel is lying cold and dead on the stone next to Anders.

The rest of her is splitting the wretched flesh of what used to be a person and bleeding black blood into the street. She cuts the red from the black and sprays chunks of both in all directions. It is like chopping especially soft and sticky wood. Heavy work that makes her sweat, makes her hands slide on her waraxe.

There are arrows flying around her, and other blades, and they take down some of her enemies. She registers these actions without identifying their source. She identifies only templars and monsters and only seconds before she swings her axe into their flesh.

The last in this group falls. She is panting for air now but she will not stop. She is passing the Hanged Man and looking compulsively for her next target. Her eyes track wildly from side to side.

Suddenly there are hands on her shoulders that pull her to a stop. She knows these hands and for a second she cannot breathe.

"Hawke," he says. "Rest a moment."

She cannot rest. She must rest.

Her eyes close like a shutter on all the blood and chaos and she stands very still and just breathes and lets her heartbeat slow, until it is merely racing and not frantically careening out of control.

More people are talking to her but it's more than she can bear right now. She just feels Fenris's hands on her shoulders and she doesn't know if they're holding her back or holding her upright. They are just holding her and it is a tether to something outside this horror and the rage that is consuming her and he couldn't possibly know what it means to her except that he does, of course he does.

She breathes.

And suddenly there is a crash and she opens her eyes as the roof of the Hanged Man collapses in a cloud of smoke and flame and ancient moldy dust and she finally notices that all of her friends are here, they have _followed her_, and now they all watch forlornly as their bar and their meeting house and their home crumbles in front of their eyes and it is as bad as the Chantry's desecration; no, worse.

There is a flash of red behind her eyes and she's moving again.

People turn and run from her. Which saves her having to kill them, so it's good. She can't imagine what they see when they see her; she feels drenched in blood, her armor must be entirely red. She must look like death.

There is more fighting and it is a blur, a cacophony of clangs and blows. Not a dance, not a game. This is pure bloody business and it's almost monotonous and she loses track of how many blows she has dealt, where she is bleeding from, what exactly hurts, where her left gauntlet went and how long it's been missing.

She notices now that she has arrived at the Docks, that has somehow traveled there without giving much thought to putting one foot in front of another. Her body has simply piloted her there. Her legs took the steps as her hands did their dirty work, and sometime she had stopped paying attention and now she was there.

It is strange that a body can remain standing without any conscious command to do so, that it doesn't just drop to the ground when her concentration wains. Like the Templar on the stairs without his head. It's a good thing, and a strange thing. She feels she should have fallen hours ago.

Now for a second she feels distress - she feels helplessly carried along by her own body which seems to have acquired a will of its own. Then the disorienting feeling goes and she is left adrift.

There are ships here, and she came here for a reason and it must have been for the ships, to get to the Gallows. Yes. She needs a ship.

But there is a dwarf talking to her. Varric. That's Varric.

Sadie forces herself to concentrate.

"… least tell us which side we're on. I assume from the body count that we're going to rescue Orsino, right? Hawke?"

"Yes," she says dully. "Orsino."

"Okay, Hawke," he says, in full support of her. "Okay. We're taking a boat? People, we need a boat."

Varric is taking care of it. She closes her eyes and a rushing sound drowns everything out. She is not thinking about it right now. The Gallows. That's all there is; she has to get to the Gallows.

Bethany is at the Gallows. Her sister. All she has left.

She has to save her sister.

And she promised Anders.

She promised him.

Before she

…

afraid. Luminous green eyes are looking into hers from inches away and he looks afraid. It gets her attention. She has never seen this before and she realizes that Fenris has been shouting at her for some time.

It draws her back into awareness. Possibly he is the only thing that could. He is her only anchor now, when everything is coming undone.

She reaches over and touches his face, lightly. It leaves a streak of blood across his cheek and makes time freeze for a long moment that is almost peaceful.

"It's okay," she says softly. "I'm okay."

"You are _not_," he insists in a low, tight voice. His brow is wrinkled and his jaw clenched. He is incredibly worried. They all look worried, she notices, looking around.

"I will be," she concedes. "When it's done."

"When what's done?" Aveline breaks in. She is standing just beside Fenris and her tone is as harsh as ever. Aveline never coddles. "Just what do you intend us to do?"

Sadie blinks at her. Her mind is sluggish and dull, and she has to search to come up with the words she needs.

"I've failed. The city — I've failed us all."

"This isn't your responsibility, Hawke. It was never your responsibility."

Her eyes drift closed. "Aveline… I made it mine. Orsino and Meredith. I thought I could prevent… and then Anders…"

"What's done is done, Hawke. All we can do is try to keep casualties to a minimum, try to contain this madness. We should stay in the residential areas and try to help people. The City Guard —"

"— will protect the people of Kirkwall. Without us." Her voice grows stronger, as her conviction solidifies under Aveline's scrutiny. "If you need to go with them then go. But I have to go to the Gallows, I have to see this through. If we do not help them the mages will be slaughtered."

Fenris breaks in urgently. "Hawke, listen to me! They are sending for reinforcements! The city will soon be full of Templars and we will be gravely outnumbered!"

"Let them come." She steels herself and opens her eyes. "I will murder them all."

Sebastian, from somewhere nearby, chides her. "The Templars are not to blame. They only wish to restore order. A crazed mage destroyed the holiest building in the Free Marches. The threat must be contained."

"By killing them all? I will not allow the Circle mages to be murdered."

"I'll come," Merrill speaks up. "It isn't fair to blame the Circle for what Anders did. They don't deserve to die."

"I'm with Hawke whatever comes," Varric says. "I'd like to not get killed if that's possible. But you know I've got your back."

"So do I," Isabela says shortly. She doesn't look happy, but she's on board.

Hawke looks at them in turn, finally taking them in. They will come. Someone will come.

Fenris still stands right beside her, and she looks up at him tentatively. "Will you support us?" she asks him.

He crosses his arms in front of him, an unhappy expression on his face, and glares down at he dirt.

"I will. You know that I will. But it's a _mistake_, Hawke. There is no way to win."

Sebastian agrees. "The Knight-Commander is not going to rescind the order for Annulment, and the Chantry will continue to send Templars here until it is done. Even if the Circle somehow escapes, they will be hunted to the last man."

The words are coming to her now, as if from a great distance and directly to her lips. "Meredith has overstepped her bounds. She has not allowed a Viscount to be elected. She would rule the city herself and kill anyone who opposes her. It has to stop. If we could defeat her here, new leadership would be installed, and I believe the Circle could be saved."

Reluctantly, the Chantry priest accedes. "The Knight-Commander has been… imprudent. If more deaths can be prevented, I will assist you."

Fenris appears unmoved. "You are going to your death," he says harshly. "For _mages_."

The last word strikes Sadie like a slap to the face. He says it the sour way he has said it a thousand times, but this time is too much. It makes her remember Anders.

He goes on: "Those mages have imposed on you time and again and when have they ever been grateful? The same mages you rescued from the Templars turned around and kidnapped your sister to bend you to their will! You give them kindness and they repay you in blood. They do not deserve it."

Anders had given his life to save them, to save all the mages. And he had given it _to her_. So that she would finish his task. It was a commission. A blood price.

Suddenly she snaps at him. "You would have me turn my back on them? That's no surprise. You would have them all be slaughtered, you'd probably do it yourself if you could. You would enjoy that, wouldn't you?"

She is surprised. She has no idea where these words are coming from. Her mind is perfectly empty. Something else is using her mouth.

"Hawke, I said I would support you —"

"Perhaps you would like to join their side? If you cut my throat for them first they might even make you a templar. There's a first time for everything."

Fenris staggers at this. He falls back a few paces and his face is awful. "How…" he begins, and his voice actually catches. "How could you think I would.. when have I ever given you cause to think I would betray you?"

Something stirs within her but she can't stop herself. The words are just spilling out of her mouth and she doesn't know what they will be.

"How about every time you open your mouth? Nearly every word you say is against me somehow."

He sputters. "Aside from that…"

"Are you kidding me?! Aside from it! You threaten my sister, you insult my friends! You question me at every turn! You have nothing but contempt for everything I try to do!"

"I offered my opinions, which I thought you welcomed! You have never told me to keep silent - you have even agreed with my assessment at times!"

"You are _wrong_, you have always been wrong. I just didn't want to argue with you anymore."

Oh, he is angry now. His face contorts in an ugly sneer that would make her stomach twist if she were not cold and dead inside. This is the rage she has seen many times before but never at her, never like this.

"I may not share your convictions," he seethed at her, "but I have supported you every time. I have fought for these wretched mages every time you asked it of me. _Do you know what that costs me?_To fight for their cause after all their kind has done to me? You have done nothing but disregard my counsel and ignore all that I have lived through, and still I have fought for you every time!"

"You needed my help. You needed our protection and a source of coin and you would do whatever you have to do to get it. But if you were on your own you wouldn't lift a single finger to help anyone. You're selfish, Fenris. You don't believe in anything but yourself."

"Tell me where I have been wrong! Everything I have warned you against _has come true_! Hasn't every mage we know brought us nothing but ruin?! Was I wrong about her?" He pointed violently at Merrill. "The blood witch caused the death of her Keeper and the destruction of her clan with her own selfishness! That Feynriel, after everything you did for him, is now meddling with the Templars in their dreams! And who knows what else he could do as he grows ever more powerful! And your sister! I told you she was careless, that the templars would catch her one day! The very moment you left her alone she was taken, the very moment! And Anders —"

"NO." She tries to stop him, she comes inches away and she shouts. "Never say that name to me! Never again!"

"Anders has murdered countless innocents, probably doomed your sister and the other mages and even started a war! And still you defend him! HE betrayed you! He's done nothing but use you for his own purposes and you let him!"

"You've always hated him!" Hawke's voice grows ever colder. "And not because he's a mage. You're jealous. He's everything you're not and _will never be_."

"_You let him do this!_ He killed more mages today than I have ever done! I hate magic and what it has done, but I have not indiscriminately murdered people for those convictions! And somehow _I_am the traitor, because I've said things you don't like? If I had kept quiet and killed them all none of this would have happened, would that have been acceptable?!"

"Hawke, he's right," Aveline says shortly. "This is foolish. Fenris is not going to betray us."

Sebastian steps up next to Fenris, trying to pacify the both of them. "We can argue who's more wrong and more right later. What's important right now is —"

Sadie talks over him, in a commanding tone that will brook no argument. "Anyone who doesn't want to support the mages can stay here. I am going. If you want to come, get in the boat. But I will defend them alone if I have to."

"Hawke," Fenris implores her, "do not die for this. I beg you… do not die for him."

"I'm done with you," she says coldly. "You are not welcome. If you will not fight for the mages unreservedly you are no use to me."

Fenris draws his sword.

For a horrible moment Hawke believes he will attack her. She grips her axe tightly. But he only stares at her for a long moment over his sword, the Blade of Mercy, the sword she had given him as a gift. She can hear his breath hissing hard through his clenched teeth.

Then Fenris pitches his sword contemptuously at her feet and walks away.

* * *

_author's note: this was a tough chapter to write. It's also the one where I can really hear the song in the title playing over the action. You can find that here (just delete the spaces): ZhO2QuhBHvs_

**___Over_**

**___I can't hold this day  
Anymore  
Understand me  
Anymore_**

To tread this fantasy, openly  
What have I done

Ooh this uncertainty, is taking me over

I can't mould this stage  
Anymore  
Recognise me  
Anymore

To tread this fantasy, openly  
What have I done

Ooh this uncertainty, is taking me over  
is taking me over

To tread this fantasy, openly  
What have I done

Ooh this uncertainty, is taking me over  
is taking me over

Oh, it's all over


End file.
